Psychiatrists have a treatment called magnetic stimulation that works in some people with psychosis, but figuring out which ones has been a process fraught with difficulty.

Now researchers at Western University’s medical school have landed a $2.1-million federal grant to test whether artificial intelligence can help pinpoint the patients most likely to improve with the option.

The grant from the Canadian Institute of Health Research will be used to set up a network of research centres in London and five European cities to collect genetic and brain scan data on more than 60,000 patients. Half of the study participants will have a psychosis diagnosis.

“We’ve been doing studies on small samples for so many years, but we haven’t moved forward in understanding what causes these mental health issues,” said Lena Palaniyappan, associate professor at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry and a scientist at Robarts Research Institute, Western’s research arm.

“We have a chance to study 60,000 brains in one go. This will give us some understanding about what kind of treatments we can use clinically.”

The team will use artificial intelligence — computer programs that learn, reason and self-correct as they go along — to look for patterns in the massive amount of imaging and clinical data they collect from patients in London, Munich, Oslo, Rotterdam, Montpelier, France, and Mannheim, Germany.

The artificial intelligence will eventually train itself to detect patterns in the genetic and brain scan data and then make predictions for new patients. The goal is to see how genes and brain networks interact to cause mental disorders and how that information can help doctors choose the best treatment option for patients.

Similar machine-learning techniques have been tested in London as a way to differentiate between brain scans of healthy patients and ones struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder — giving doctors a measurable determinant they can use to diagnose and tailor treatment of the condition.

“The real challenge in psychiatry is to match patients to treatment. One treatment works for one person but not for the other,” said Palaniyappan.

“If we can find a way to say to a patient, ‘You have these features in your brain, this means you’ll respond better to Treatment A, not Treatment B,’ that will be a revolutionary change in psychiatry. That’s what we’re aiming for in this study.”

Researchers will be looking at magnetic stimulation as a treatment option for patients with psychosis, a mental health disorder that can cause people to hallucinate, hear voices, lose their motivation or withdraw from social activities. The procedure, which will be delivered at St. Joseph Health Care London’s Parkwood Institute, uses magnetic pulses to activate nerve cells in the brain.

It’s already been used in patients with major depression, Palaniyappan said.

The procedure can be effective with psychosis, too – but only in a third of patients. Psychosis patients getting magnetic stimulation treatment have to go for treatment for two to three weeks, four to five times a week. If it doesn’t work, it can be frustrating for patients and a burden on the already stressed mental health care system.

“If you have to treat 100 people to get 20 people better, you’re spending a lot of resources on it,” Palaniyappan said.

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